


Kiss It Better

by PinkLetterDay



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Grief/Mourning, Loss of Parent(s), Wee!stallen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-16 01:53:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15426468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkLetterDay/pseuds/PinkLetterDay
Summary: Barry and Iris only have one parent between them. They make do.





	Kiss It Better

 

Iris doesn't really think about her Mom not being around at first. She and her Dad are a unit unto themselves, with Grandma to make dinner and tuck her in when he works late. He can weave her cornrows with the best of the other black girls' Moms and makes better pancakes than any of them, she's certain.

So she can't quite tell why she gets so mad when Suzie Harris, who's jealous of her for some reason, scornfully asks "Where's _your_ Mom?" at Parent-Teacher day.

"She's in heaven with the angels," says Iris aloofly, confident that there's no way Suzie's parents can claim higher company.

"She must like the angels more than you then," shoots back Suzie and Iris gets in trouble for ripping her stupid ribbons right off her stupid head.

Joe gives her a talking-to that's perhaps less stern than usual because he can tell Iris is really hurting beneath the small thundercloud face. But Iris won't tell her Dad what Suzie said because she knows, somehow, that he would be hurt if he knew. She goes to bed without her supper with nary a word, but she's too tired to not be miserable by the time Joe comes to tuck her in.

"Why did Mommy leave?" she whispers, curling forlornly under his big, strong arm.

The hand carding through her hair stops suddenly. "She didn't have a choice, baby girl," says her Dad, sounding as sad as she feels. But something in his voice makes her think he doesn't really believe it.

Iris makes friends with Barry and she likes him a lot but when Mrs. Allen comes to pick him up from school and calls him her "beautiful boy" she gets jealous and wistful. Barry always has both parents around him in pictures and his Mom makes them PBand J sandwiches when she comes over to his house (which she does more and more because Granma Esther is sick and Dad says "he needs the hours")

When they play house, Iris insists on being the Dad and Barry agrees to be the Mom. Iris pretends to strap on her gun and badge, drops kisses onto Barry's and the children's heads at the table and bids goodbye in a deep voice that makes both of them giggle. Iris watches with avid interest as Barry reads Luke and Leia bedtime stories and makes them noodle soup when they're sick.

It all seems like what Daddy and Grandma Esther already do for her (except Barry is a scientist-astronaut-doctor Mom and the children are sick with space measles, which calls for his specific skill set) so Iris concludes she probably isn't missing out on much. But then Mrs. Allen will call them in for snacks and there's something in the way her lemonade and sandwiches taste, like the way her hugs feel, that makes Iris's tummy feel hollow.

Mrs. Allen's smile is kind and her hair is really pretty in the sun. Iris realizes she cant remember what her Mom looked like, not really. She only remembers the pictures and a sense of love and home when she sniffs the old perfume bottle she keeps in her closet. It seems a grave injustice suddenly, that Barry gets to have both parents.

Grandma Esther passes away that year and now it really is just Iris and her Dad. The house feels as big and empty as the space in Iris's heart. Daddy is working all the time and tired and sad and Iris is at Barry's more than ever and it _hurts_ to be in that house surrounded by Barry's careless comforts and the easy love of both his parents. It makes Iris _mad_. One day she actually shoves a bewildered Barry away and stomps off home, determined to make Daddy feel better, make both of them feel better. _She_ can be the Mommy, they don't _need_ anyone else, she'll make dinner like Mrs. A does, lay the table nicely and have a proper sit down meal again and Daddy would be proud and not sad anymore.

But all she ends up doing is somehow nearly setting the kitchen on fire and getting into a lot of trouble for lying to the Allens and going home without telling anyone. Joe is tired and angry and grounds her and Iris runs upstairs away from the ruined kitchen and slams into her room because its not fair, its not _fair_. She takes out her Mom's perfume bottle and sniffs it but its almost completely evaporated. She realizes she can remember the scent of Mrs. Allen's hugs and Granma's clean soap better than she can her Mom's and she's so enraged she smashes the bottle.

Iris feels guilty when Barry approaches her again tentatively at school, unsure of what he'd done wrong. She tries to hold onto her anger but it has simply turned into a tight knot of misery and she bursts into angry tears, much to Barry's alarm, confessing that she misses her Mom which is _stupid_ because she can't even remember her. But she remembers she and Dad were happy when she was here and what if she really did go with the angels because Iris wasn't good enough?

Barry listens to this all with grave patience and says that that's silly, Iris is the most awesome person in the whole world and her Mom must have known that cos Moms know _everything_ and they love you more than _anything_. If it helps, she can share his Mom sometimes, if she wants. Iris doesn't have the heart to tell him that he's missing the point, but his staunch support does help a little.

It gets better over time. Iris learns to hide her jealousy but the space in her heart continues to ring hollow and the house is still too big except for when Barry comes over. She rather selfishly wishes he lived with her than in that land of plenty that always feels a little alien to her, and makes Barry a little alien as well.

And then she gets her wish in the most awful way possible.

That lost look in Barry's eyes, so suddenly ripped away from his warm two-parent home and thrust into the big, empty spaces of her own, is too awful to see. They are finally connected now, in a way they hadn't been before, marked by loss, of having learned too young the ephemeral nature of love, safety and security. When Iris looks into Barry's eyes now she sees that empty space reflected back at her and it is the worst thing she could possibly imagine, far worse than the consciousness of different worlds that had seperated them before.

(A small part of her is terrified by the thought that maybe Nora was taken because she had been jealous of Barry. She's old enough to know this is illogical but a part of her fervently hopes he never finds out.)

Barry's not like her though. They both remember Nora, with her long gold earrings and honeysuckle-scented hair, the hugs and the lemonade, the warmth of her that seemed to seep into the very walls of their home. Iris can never even hope to replace that.

But you know. Not having a Mom is new to him, but she's old hat at it. Sure, she's never lost her Dad, but they can't afford the easy, comfortable lifestyle the Allens could. While Iris had never really gone without, she's conscious of money and necessity in a way that Barry simply isnt.

(She can also tell when it begins to dawn on Barry that they are black in the way she had realized years before.)

It's all very concerning. Barry is Difficult and Troubled (is how his social workers says it) and honestly kind of a jerk sometimes. Her Dad lets him get away with a lot (although it took a while for Barry to understand the unspoken Rules of Dad - never make him tell you to do something twice, all decrees are final, and No Backtalk) but Iris is on tenterhooks all the same. Barry is not from their world and she gets it, she really does, she knows being furious in her bones, but she's really scared if Barry doesn't stop pushing her Dad that her Dad will reach the limit of his patience and send him away. She knows Dad would never do that to _her_ but Barry doesnt belong to him the way he does to her.

The only thing she can do is try and clumsily spackle over the hole Nora left. Dad can be as good a Dad as Dr. Allen, she's sure, but they have to do without a Mom and boys dont seem to do as well without one as girls do (Dad was kind of hopeless for a while after Grandma died).

She makes her and Barry packed lunches for school, makes him lemonade like his Mom's and hot chocolate the special way Grandma Esther made it. They bake brownies and watch musicals and do homework together. She monitors the laundry situation, runs interference between him and her Dad and sneaks into his room to hold him at night when he cries in his sleep. And even though Taking Care of Sick Kids is a Dad thing in the West house, when he gets so sick he can't stop crying for his parents even with Iris and her Dad holding him between them, she slips away and comes back with some Campbell's chicken noodle soup. It's a far cry from Nora's, but it's a start.

(Sometimes, they take turns at it. "Kiss it better" becomes a game for them. Iris put a butterfly plaster on Barry once and unthinkingly placed a kiss on it the way Nora used to do. Barry had liked it and reciprocated unexpectedly when Iris had scraped her knee in turn. This eventually escalates over the years into getting in slap fights and tickle fights where they knock knees and elbows and heads and the other has to "kiss it better")

It's all an awkward roadmap of Mom Things she's pieced together just from watching Mrs. Allen, but it seems to work. Dad is mostly amused by how she bosses Barry around and takes care of him and he soon stops having outbursts.

The nightmares don't stop though. Iris doesnt tell her Dad that she's started having them too, of a man in yellow grabbing Barry and Dad and flying away on angel wings.

***

Many years later, Iris realizes nightmares can come true when, months after a finally freed Henry Allen walks away from his son, her own world crumbles with the card-castle of her parents' lies. She is keeping vigil at her dying mother's bedside, her heart a storm of hurt, fury and incredible sadness when Barry slips quietly into the room. He lies down beside her on the cot and the awkwardness of love confessions and dead fiancés between them dissolves as their eyes meet, the mutual resonance of betrayed love again seamlessly dropping them back in sync. Then it's finally his turn to hold her as she curls into him and shakes with silent weeping, once more two lonely children huddling to cover their empty spaces.

The nightmares continue to become real - Barry loses Henry forever, Iris doesnt speak to Joe for a year.  But dreams come true as well. Their old love transforms into romance and desire and they find each other again and again, in their bed, in their home, in their vows. Adult life speeds them past the shadows of their child selves, facing down each insurmountable hurdle the universe throws at them. They struggle to balance the facets of their lives but they do not fall out of step again, always running in tandem, passing faith back and forth, never looking back.

And so Iris manages to dam the nebulous anxiety percolating at the back of her mind until she's four months pregnant. The fear hits her full force at three am, propelling her out of bed to a frenzied search through the house.

She drags out the box of old photographs and stares desperately at a young and lovely Francine holding her toddler self close. Grandma Esther is stern and loving through faded sepia tones, and Nora kisses and hugs a young Barry whose sunshine knows no pain.

It's him that finds her sitting on the floor in the wee hours, awash in second-hand memories and tears.

"I can't remember them, Barr!" she wails as he draws her into his arms. "I keep trying but I can't even remember Grandma that well, and she loved me so much! I don't remember what a Mom is like, I don't -," he murmurs into her hair and rubs her back soothingly while she tries not to hyperventilate, "I don't know how to do this, Barry."

He waits till she calms down and leans their foreheads together. In his eyes, a glimmer of the familiar pain reaches out to touch her grief.

"I don't know how to do this either," he confesses, "And I've had two Dads. But we'll figure it out. If it helps," his mouth quirks up at the corners, "I'll be the Mom and you be the Dad."

They both collapse into giggles through their tears.

...

A few more years later, Dawn and Don are bundled on the living room sofa like a pair of sick little blanket burritos. They are watching Singing In The Rain for the umpteenth time (a lesser evil for Iris at this point - it could be worse. It could be Frozen 2) while she makes dinner (Nora's chicken noodle soup for Don and Barry and Joe's gumbo for her and Dawn)

Barry's on the phone with the pediatrician when she slides in next to them, carefully setting the bowls aside to feel their hot foreheads.

Dawn looks piteously up at her. "Don't feel good, Mommy."

"I know, boo," soothed Iris. "Here, let Mommy kiss it better."

She plants a smacking kiss on first Dawn's head and then Don's, making them giggle, and looks up to find Barry gazing at them with a strange expression.

"What?" she asks worriedly. "Does the doctor want us to bring them in?"

"Nah," says Barry smiling. He pockets the phone and slides in next to their son, bookending their family. "She said their Mom and Dad should kiss it better."

And Iris realizes, as Barry's sunshine grin reflects her own, that it is no longer the pain of empty spaces that holds them in sync.

 

**Author's Note:**

> UPDATE: 
> 
>  
> 
> [Coda to this fic on my tumblr](https://pinkletterday.tumblr.com/post/176988342115/coda-to-kiss-it-better)
> 
> For any Bollywood fans out there, I wrote this listening to ["Maa"](https://youtu.be/pOK08cRwE6c) from Taare Zameen Par. :)
> 
> If you liked this story, I'd love to hear from you! You can also visit me at [pinkletterday](https://pinkletterday.tumblr.com) on tumblr. <3


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